Peel back the layers and the Marshall win could be Xavier Musketeers' most impressive yet

Xavier Musketeers guard Trevon Bluiett (5) passes along the baseline in the second half during the college basketball game between the Marshall Thundering Herd and the Xavier Musketeers, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017, at Cintas Center in Cincinnati.(Photo: Kareem Elgazzar)

And more peeling. A stand-in starter – freshman Naji Marshall, the usual sixth-man for the Musketeers – played just 15 minutes and missed the second half due to an in-game injury Tuesday against the Thundering Herd.

That's enough peeling. What you're left with is No. 9 Xavier's 81-77 win over unranked Marshall, and one of the more interesting and impressive items on the 2017-18 team's resume.

It wasn't always pretty, but with Xavier head coach playing musical chairs on the sideline, maybe the victory is prettier than we realized.

Here are the biggest takeaways from No. 9 Xavier's 11th win of the season:

• By my count, some six players were in some state of flux before or during Xavier's win over Marshall, and that's essentially a roster nightmare for any coach in America.

To recap, Mack had. A.) Two starters ruled out through injury B.) Two freshmen returning from a one-game suspension and C.) Two additional players hurt during Tuesday's game, one of which didn't return after playing just 15 minutes (Marshall).

You simply don't game plan for those scenarios, or anything close to it.

Instead of griping and wasting the opportunity before it, Xavier put its hard hats on and went to work.

"I was super-charged about our team not making excuses from the very beginning," Mack said. "We took Marshall extremely serious."

Absent three key contributors for the majority of the game, five players stepped up and scored in double figures.

The bigs combined for 44 points and utter domination on the glass.

Even green freshman Elias Harden logged 18 minutes in the game.

It was a total team win when huge pieces of the team were missing, and that is hugely impressive.

"We're light on scholarship players right now," Mack said. "For us, it's a great win for our team to be able to say your best player (Trevon Bluiett) isn't going to play very well. You're going to sit two guys that don't play one minute and then the guy that fills in for them doesn't play in the second half. I don't know how many teams can battle through that, so we'll take it."

Don't get lulled into thinking there are huge underlying issues with this Xavier team, though. That's cheap, and too easy.

You can easily point to mitigating circumstances that hindered Xavier in both games. On Saturday against ETSU, it was a screwy exam week practice schedule, two suspensions and a key in-game injury for J.P. Macura.

On Tuesday, some of the above still applied and there was another injury as Marshall crumpled into a heap at the halftime buzzer (he watched the second half in uniform on the bench, which was something of a good sign).

Senior guard Trevon Bluiett's been a more of a volume shooter over this two-game period than we're accustomed to seeing from him, but all players go through cold streaks.

The team is only faltering in the sense that they're falling victim to some unfortunate injuries, and that's really not much of an indictment on the quality of the team (think: Elite Eight run in 2017 NCAA Tournament after injuries last winter).

Kerem Kanter played his most recent best-ever game for Xavier as he racked up 16 points and 13 boards in a career-high 35 minutes. It was the graduate transfer's first start for XU, and not a bad introduction to the starting five, eh?

The days of a meager Kanter feeling his way through games are long gone and feel like they happened months ago. In truth, it's only been a few weeks since Kanter started to come on strong at the Las Vegas Invitational. Ever since, he's been a bona fide force for Xavier and has changed the way teams prepare for the Muskies. He opens up the offense for the entire team, and can shoot quite well, too.

Xavier returns to the floor Friday at Northern Iowa (9 p.m. local time for tipoff). The game is XU's last of the non-conference season. The Musketeers begin Big East Conference play next Wednesday at Marquette before returning to Cintas Center Dec. 30 to host DePaul.